featherynscale (
featherynscale) wrote2007-08-16 09:38 am
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Shiny shiny things, and cleaning up my language
We picked up our rings yesterday, yay! And, extra special bonus: Both of my rings fit, despite the fact that I forgot which hand I'd ordered the first ring for, and had to guess about which hand to order the second ring for.
With that delightful announcement out of the way, I have a (completely unrelated) challenge for myself:
On our trip back from Denver, I told
kittenpants about E-prime, a variant of the English language in which a speaker or writer cannot use any form of 'to be' - no 'is', 'was', 'will be', or related construction has a place. This forces a writer to use an active voice (which also implies that a writer cannot hide the actor in a sentence -- if you need something, you have to say "I need this" rather than "this is needed" and so on). It also clears up some linguistic entanglements and forces a speaker to separate traits/conditions from behaviour (i.e. you can't say "John is an asshole", but you can say "John said rude things to me on the phone again").
I had the habit of speaking and writing in E-prime for quite a while, but have drifted away from it in the last year or two. I find that training myself to think in E-prime has a positive effect on my magical practice (and on the clarity of my communication in general), so it seemed like a good idea to try and go back to it.
So I think that for the next thirty days or so, at least, I will try to use E-prime for all my writing. I find it more difficult to do it speaking, so I will also practice that, but don't want to set a firm goal about it. I trust that you lot will point out where I fail, won't you?
EDIT: I do, of course, except fiction from this challenge, as I have spent enough time polishing that style that I don't want to lose it. I also except Balderdash answers, since apparently people already try to guess the answer by determining which answer they think I wrote, and I hate to make things too easy. :)
EDIT: Thanks to the people who caught me screwing up *my example*. I have gotten so far out of the habit of this that I totally missed it. Sheesh.
With that delightful announcement out of the way, I have a (completely unrelated) challenge for myself:
On our trip back from Denver, I told
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I had the habit of speaking and writing in E-prime for quite a while, but have drifted away from it in the last year or two. I find that training myself to think in E-prime has a positive effect on my magical practice (and on the clarity of my communication in general), so it seemed like a good idea to try and go back to it.
So I think that for the next thirty days or so, at least, I will try to use E-prime for all my writing. I find it more difficult to do it speaking, so I will also practice that, but don't want to set a firm goal about it. I trust that you lot will point out where I fail, won't you?
EDIT: I do, of course, except fiction from this challenge, as I have spent enough time polishing that style that I don't want to lose it. I also except Balderdash answers, since apparently people already try to guess the answer by determining which answer they think I wrote, and I hate to make things too easy. :)
EDIT: Thanks to the people who caught me screwing up *my example*. I have gotten so far out of the habit of this that I totally missed it. Sheesh.
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I can see some exceptions, for instance, doesn't "John acted rude" essentially the same thing? You're putting intent on someone else that they may not have actually had... maybe I'm misunderstanding.
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"John said rude things to me on the phone" makes a much better example.
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"Was" is a past tense form of "to be." "Was rude" isn't using "was" as a modal, it's a verb plus predicate adjective.
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It could also prove interesting to consciously meta-model communications for a couple of weeks. Not ask all the questions of other people, certainly--no need to incite the lynch mob--but to mentally review all of the distortions and deletions and generalizations and nominalizations and such when you hear, write, or speak them.
Heh. I may just practice some E-Prime, now, myself.
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Also, I like your suggestion of meta-modeling casual conversation. I expect that would yield some interesting insight. Maybe I will try that next! :)
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Wouldn't "We/you are in " satisfy the requirement, or not?
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I sooo want to play language-oriented games with you all =)
In the less-magically relevant and also a curious endeavor: language of no verb. once, in england, no verbs in our house all day. challenging, entertaining, and very circumlocutionary. surprisingly meaningful conversations, too...
I'm a big fan of the active voice; I've vaguely heard of E-prime before, and have never tried pursuing it completely. Passive voice lets us off a lot hooks. (Lois McMaster Bujold has a beautiful, comic example of this in her book Brothers in Arms, and sadly I can't find the snippet online at the moment. It entails an enlisted soldier reporting to his CO after he and his friends laid waste to a liquor shop on shore leave. It went something like: "'Words were exchanged. Weapons were drawn. Shots were fired.' Miles noted the sudden absence of any actors in all of this action."
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I don't know that I really enjoy the active voice in an aesthetic way - in fact, I think all active all the time in speaking, particularly, makes you sound sort of autistic - but I do understand how assistance in organizing my thoughts I get from it. (And the example you give made me laugh! I have had that very experience, in which passive voice totally means "I refuse to admit to anything that just happened. As a matter of fact, I stood on the corner and minded my own business the entire time...")
I have also done the no-verb thing, but mostly for comic effect. I had a friend in high school named Steve, who would drop into the no-verb speech when he felt like he had too much to do, as if he had so much going on that he had no time for verbs, and we all did it in solidarity from time to time. :) Not a lot of meaningful conversation, but what do you expect from high-schoolers screwing around? :)
balderdash
sure -- deal me in =)
Re: balderdash
this be a language hijack!
Re: this be a language hijack!
Re: this be a language hijack!
multiple uses of Be
Wikipedia lists five uses of Be, and says that identity (noun be noun) and predication (noun be adjective) are considered especially bad by E-Prime advocates. Your description and examples focus on avoiding predication and auxiliary (passive voice). Yours makes more sense to me -- I don't see why identity is supposed to be bad.
Of course, WP also lists location as one use, and that seems to me just a special case of predication, where the adjective is a prepositional phrase about location. (Ack, now I have "ablative of location" in my head. Latin class infected my brain.)
Re: multiple uses of Be
E-prime prevents you from saying things like "I am an artist" -- instead, you have to say things like "I make art". In theory, this means that in order to claim the implied 'artist' status, you have to actually 'make art'. An outside observer can't tell if you 'are an artist' or not, but they generally can tell if you 'make art' (because you can show them that). So it adds a dimension of honesty to language.
Other people might have other problems with the identity 'to-be', but I think I only have that one. If I think about it more, I might come up with others.
Re: multiple uses of Be
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I think, if I understand this correctly, a lot of it is about not making assumptions about what is truth and what is opinion.
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